BeerAdvocate Magazine has come up with a new labeling system for the new year, thus this one is Volume II (2008, basically) Issue 1. This basically doesn’t commit them to years and months for deadlines, in my opinion. No big deal.

They have also gone so far as to post “FREE” right on the front cover. Well, the magazine is free if you can find it anywhere (not so far in DE for me), but not so free if you’re a subscriber like I am, $20 that way. I’ll pay for the convenience of getting the magazine sent to my door because I like the magazine and I don’t mind supporting BeerAdvocate, but if I can find a local reliable place to pick it up for free each issue, then I might have second thoughts about remaining a subscriber – but we’ll see when the time comes.

It took all the way to page 16 with the ‘9 Steps to Beerdom’ article for this issue to finally grab my attention. This issues featured beer-guru was none other than Hugh Sisson from Clipper City Brewing in MD. Hugh has been in the beer game and a brewer since the early 80s and he knows what’s up. Clipper City has had a small resurgence in the last couple years with their big beers line called Heavy Seas which they have put out, real nice stuff. The article was like many of the others in the 9 Steps talking about the trials and tribulations that these brewers have gone through just to bring us the sacred nectar we all so love. Keep it up all!

In the ‘Beer Wares’ article they featured a horrible looking gimmicky product called the Official Beer Glove for drinking in cold weather with beer grippers on it, whatever. Also they was a small review of the book “Beer & Food: Pairing & Cooking with Craft Beer” by Lucy Saunders. I got this book for Christmas, I have not looked through it much, but it appears to be top notch which is about the same as what these guys have to say. And finally was another product going by the name of The Cure. This is a powder that when mixed with water turns into a sparkling fruit flavored vitamin drink that when drank after drinking eliminated hangovers. I don’t believe the hype, but I would still try it anyway. Also in the ‘Innovation’ section was a neat looking little hop sniffer/sampler. Basically it looks like about 12 different hops in little once ounce jars. The idea is as you are drinking beer you can sniff each hop until you find a similar or matching hop and then read about that hop to gain a greater knowledge about your beer. They have it labeled as, “Explore the depths of beer – Beer tasting and hop appreciation kit“. Looks neat, but not worth $50 neat.

The feature article was labeled ‘Project Koelschip’ and was about Allagash Brewing Company and how they are going to be the Americans to create a true Lambic style beer, way interesting. Lambic beer is a very involved, time consuming, space consuming, and odd beer to make. A lot of the “rules” of brewing are thrown out the window. A koelschip, or coolship, is “a large shallow open fermenter in which fresh wort is exposed to wild yeast and microfauna.” Allagash had a separate building built to store their koelschip in to try to keep “funk” away from the rest of their sanitary brewing equipment. The wort is mashed longer, boiled longer, and hopped less with over one year old hops. Then the wort is pumped hot to the koelschip where goes to cool in the open, cooling and “collecting” the wild yeast. After 24 hours when it has cooled it is recirculated for another 24 hours to make sure everything is thoroughly blended, and then placed into “de-oaked” French oak barrels. The beer won’t be ready to drink for another three years, minimum! Ofter older and younger Lambics are blended to find an appropriate flavor that the brewer is going for. So far they have brewed two batches and plan on brewing a new batch ever six months. So they will have six batches brewed over three years before the first beer is even ready for public consumption, that’s one heck of an investment, I really hope it pans out for them.

And to wrap up this issue was Tomme Arthur‘s (owner and brewer of Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey) article titled ‘Fuck eBay’. Well, that just about sums it up. It’s a very straight-forward, serious, yet tongue-in-cheek article where he expresses his disgust with eBay policies for re-selling alcohol and the people that do it. I think that he made a lot of good points and there was a large discussion on the BA boards about the article and the policies.

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